On Mon, 12 Oct 2015 16:21:32 -0400, Tekkie®
wrote:

posted for all of us...



On Sun, 11 Oct 2015 16:55:47 -0700 (PDT), Shade Tree Guy
wrote:

On Sunday, October 11, 2015 at 1:48:14 PM UTC-7, Ralph Mowery wrote:

When you buy a Lincoln and other high dollar cars you are not suspose to
keep them long enough for anything to break. They should be traded off
every 2 to 3 years for a new one..Even if it only has a few miles on it.
The cars are only suspose to last a short length of time. That way the car
companies can make more profit. Once by selling the cars at a high price
and again by not using high dollar parts that last.

Most any modern engine should last 250K miles, but the rest of the car?
Forgetaboutit!
Actually, todays cars, on the whole, are the best vehicles ever
built. Not just the engines, but the bodies.

Even the extremely heavily bodied cars of the thirties and forties
rusted worse than today's thin-steel bodies. The paint stands up MUCH
better than the paints of the past. It is not out of the ordinary for
a 25 year old car to go to the scrapyard today with it's original
paint intact, and the body in reasonable condition.

Yes, there are technology problems. But even the electric windows
today generally last every bit as well as the average manual window
winders of the past. Sure, there are some of the old systems that
stood up better than some of today's, but many of today's systems will
outlast the majority of the old ones. It was nothing to have the
window tracks and the channels that held the glass to the regulators
rotted out totally on a 10 year old car..You virtually NEVER see those
problems today. The weatherpack connectors used today generally last a
lot longer than the "open" connectors of the past - even when the
conductor and connector sizes are only a fraction of the size the old
ones were. Yes, some manufacturers scrimp a bit too much and their
design comes back to bite them. Occaisionally this happens while under
warranty. Once in a while you run across the problem on a vehicle
under 10 years old - but most cars from before the nineties were
pretty much junk by the time they were 10 or 15 years old. Today the
average fleet age is approaching 12 years in the USA. The median age
has crept up to 10 years - meaning fully half of the vehicles on the
road in the USA are 10 years old or older

+1 Just don't deploy the airbags...

I hear ya - the GM compacts - pontiac sunfire, Chevy Cavalier etc -
could be written off by hitting a curb. One bent rim, $60 windsheild,
dash pad, 2 air bags, air bag sensors and labor to install, $2800.00 -
salvage value $500, retail value $2400-$2800 - A slam dunk - it was a
write-off.